


never learn their names

by ThatHydrokinetic



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, endgame/infinity war spoiler free!, i'm going to post a follow-up fic that is endgame complaint but this one is Clean, it's compliant with canon up to winter soldier, this b is a mashup of comic and mcu canon and i have 0 regrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 20:19:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18724264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatHydrokinetic/pseuds/ThatHydrokinetic
Summary: She never learned any of their names.These girls that she grew up with. Her time was better spent learning, memory better dedicated to the things that would keep her alive. Even when they were down to seven, six, five; she couldn’t be bothered to spend enough time getting to know any of them that it mattered.Besides, she couldn’t risk getting attached. Attachments were how you got caught. They were how you ended up with a gun to your head and a wall to your back, and Наталия could afford neither.





	never learn their names

**Author's Note:**

> in celebration of endgame releasing, please enjoy my "fanfics these days are so male-centered" spite fic
> 
> also "marvel does character development dirty" spite fic
> 
> i wrote this because i couldn't find a single fic that featured natasha as a main character. this took me over a calendar year to write i think

_“One with the environment. One of the most valuable skills in espionage. You can gear up with the best swag out there—Put on camo, tech, weaponry... But it is the unteachable skill to belong anywhere. The other edge of what is the unfortunate truth: You must first belong nowhere.”_

 

1261H relearned every morning how it felt to have a knife at her back.

She worked very hard to be the favorite of her teachers, and that meant that the other girls looked at her with a dangerous jealousy. It wasn’t her fault that they turned squeamish at some of their assignments. It was only her fault that she was strong enough to bury her own disgust and do what had to be done.

Days were long, and nights were longer, and 1261H never learned the meaning of “rest.”

When she turned twelve, half her class disappeared overnight, and she was gifted with a name - Наталия.

Her training only intensified. Breaks came in the form of sleep and ballet classes, to maintain her cover in case the legitimacy of their operation came into question. Not that it ever did—in retrospect, she’s pretty certain the Russian government was more than a little aware of what the Red Room was doing with thirty-three of their best and brightest young girls.

She spent her mornings learning fluency in four different languages, and then lunch practicing her fluency in the five she already knew. She spent her afternoons in hand-to-hand combat, and then later with a gun in her palm. Her evenings were filled with lessons on how to infiltrate a man’s head and how to slip information from everything from a child to a highly encrypted computer. Nights were spent sparring, where they fought until they dropped from exhaustion, one by one.

Slowly, girls disappeared. Наталия never knew where they went, wouldn’t know how to ask if she cared. Her focus was solely on making sure she wasn’t one of them, that any attention on her was only on her gun.

Before she knew it she’s one of ten, then one of nine, and then one of eight—she would be concerned for them, if she wasn’t concerned for herself. Some of the other girls were bonded tighter by the fact that they could disappear any day, fall the way that their sisters had before them, but Наталия wasn’t one of them. She’d seen how these girls disappeared. She wasn’t about to get attached to something she couldn’t guarantee.

All she could guarantee is her own body, and even that was only on the best days.

  


When she was fifteen, she was sent on her first mission. Her hair was dyed blonde, and her American accent was freshly polished and just round enough on the edges to match her fluttering eyelashes.

It was simple, low-risk; mostly to see if she had what it took to pull the trigger.

Well. She had never been one to disappoint.

  


She never learned any of their names.

These girls that she grew up with. Her time was better spent learning, memory better dedicated to the things that would keep her alive. Even when they were down to seven, six, five; she couldn’t be bothered to spend enough time getting to know any of them that it mattered.

Besides, she couldn’t risk getting attached. Attachments were how you got caught. They were how you ended up with a gun to your head and a wall to your back, and Наталия could afford neither.

  


The Asset was brought in to train them, sometimes.

She didn’t like him much. His stare was too vacant, his motions too fluid. But there was something about him she respected, too; he was the favorite amongst his teachers, and so she figured he understood where she came from when she placed the barrel to the temple of each of her sisters, knowing that being the best was the only way to survive.

It was impossible to impress him, which only served to frustrate her. She didn’t know if ‘impress’ was the right word for how her instructors felt, but it was better than ‘impassive’. The only time he spoke was to bark words in sharp Russian, the only time he moved more than his eyes was while he was sparring with them.

The last time he came in to train them, they were down to five. She was seventeen and raring for a fight, and his job was to go at them until either he or they was dead or close. One girl was already sprawled on the ground, her body unnaturally still, and her sisters all pretended they couldn’t see her.

(All except for one: the only one of them who kept her hair long, tied back in a braid she coiled at the nape of her neck. She knelt beside the girl and gripped her hand, whispering words that Наталия didn’t care to listen to.)

Наталия focused on watching as each of them ran towards the Asset, analyzed how he accounted for each of their individual skills.

It’s a talent they all should have known, but it looked like few knew how to apply it. That must be what this session was about, she figured—they needed to learn how to find an opponent's weakness, how to create one where there weren’t any. It should have been impossible to find any in Russia’s little pet monster, but Наталия’s never been one to give up.

By the time it was her turn to stand in front of him, she was still at a loss as to how to take him down. The Asset was unbreakable—they’d certainly invested enough money into making it so. He knew how to compensate for his size, when to throw his weight into blows, the combined destruction of his flesh and his metal arms.

“Natalia,” her instructor said, a thin man with wire frame glasses and a look in his eye she’s wanted to carve off more than once, “начáть.”

Neither of them moved. Then, in a flash of metal, he had his hand pressing around her throat. She went limp, knowing he’d hold her up. Swinging her leg around, slamming her heel into his jaw.

He dropped her and stumbled backward, and she barely managed to turn a crumple against the ground into a roll into a crouch.

“Xороший,” he muttered, and she smiled.

She whipped a leg around, aiming for his knees. She brushed him as he stepped aside, aiming a kick at her torso. She avoided it by lunging backwards, catching herself on her palms and flipping upward so she was standing again.

They circled each other like feral animals, which she was well aware they were both far from. They were sleek guns, aimed at one another, made to kill.

Since she knew he wasn’t going to make the mistake of making the first move again, so she didn’t wait for him to move. She moved to kick again at his legs, but again, he dodged. He went to crush her, but she saw it coming and rolled out of the way.

She needed to end this. She knew she wasn’t good enough to beat him in a fair fight, but she also refused to lose. His enhanced endurance would start showing soon, because he’d always be able to outlast her. They might both be born from flesh and blood, but that was little more than a technicality for him.

The crowd of people around them began to fray her around the edges. Soon. She needed to end this soon.

Dancing right out of reach of his arms, she scrambled rapidly to think of what to do. There had to be some solution for that metal arm of his, some way to take his biggest advantage out of the game.

She glanced behind him at the crowd of spectators, and it was something there that gave her an idea.

She backed up quickly, and then threw herself forward, sliding across the ring. He reached out to catch her, but he expected her to be coming towards him, and was thrown off by the fact that she wasn’t heading towards him at all. Instead, she careened towards one of her instructors, a woman she’d actually been fond of, and ignored her screams of protest and fear as Natalia dug through her ear.

Then she dropped to the floor, missing the Asset’s hand and crushing the hearing aid beneath her fingers, exposing the thin wires beneath.

This time, when he grabbed at her, she let him, shoving the crackling wires through the plates of his metal arm.

She didn’t know if he felt pain, whether in that arm or in general, but the sensation of electricity arcing through him can’t have been a pleasant one. He reeled backwards, falling to his knees, and it was just enough of a chink in his system that she was able to reach forward and grab his flesh arm, bracing it against her knee and snapping it clean in half.

(Later, after she’s spent a few years as Natasha and known the Asset instead as Bucky, she’ll wonder what would have happened if she had understood what they’d done to him. She isn’t sure if it would have changed anything, and some nights, that’s the reason she can’t sleep.)

  


“You three,” the woman said, her lips smiling, painted purple, “are the future of the Red Room.”

 _Black Widows._ Three of them, all that was left of the thirty-three they started with. The only three strong enough to survive.

Natalia had been gifted many names over the course of her short life, but this one had seemed a ghost to her, a fairy-tale ending from a story that was far from magical.

That night they get to sleep a full eight hours, and it’s enough for her to feel like she really won.

  


“Kill her.”

She did.

  


“Seduce him.”

She did.

  


“Kill him.”

She did.

  


“Kill them.”

“But they’re just—” one of her sisters began, but Natalia was already pulling the trigger.

“Children,” she finished, as she looked at the blood spatter around her.

“That didn’t matter when it was us, Inessa,” Natalia said.

“But we’re not them,” Inessa said. She couldn’t take her eyes off the bodies, small and limp and too, too young—

“No. We’re stronger.” Natalia was already walking away, trying to pretend that didn’t taste like a lie.

  


“Kill her.”

Natalia cut off the protest before it could make it further than her lungs, because she knew, she knew what happened to girls who protested, girls who questioned—

Because Inessa knelt in front of her, the barrel of Natalia’s gun pressed against her brow.

“She’s a Black Widow, though,” Natalia said. There were no tells to show how shaken she felt, none that hadn’t been beaten out of her somewhere along her twenty years.

Don’t get close. Call them your sisters, but never learn their names. Attachments were liabilities, and liabilities were how you ended up with a wall to your back and a gun in your hand.

“Not anymore,” the woman said, the one with the purple lipstick and soft eyes. “Think of this as a lesson, Natalia; you are valuable, but that does not mean you can’t be replaced.”

Tamara, the final of their trio, looked disinterestedly from Natalia’s gun to the woman standing behind them. “Can she not be wiped?”

“I’m sorry?” the woman asked, her smile more shark than confusion, but Tamara’s expression of distance didn’t waver.

“Like the Asset.” There was oil on her hands from where she had been cleaning her guns. She had paused at the entrance of their superiors, but she returned to it now; a brush to clean the barrel, a brush to oil it, take apart and reassemble. “Wipe her and start again.”

Natalia was trying to ignore Inessa, steady beneath the pressure of her gun, but she didn’t miss how her eyes flew wide, something heavy in her gaze as she turned her head towards Tamara.

“That is a very expensive process.”

Inessa was shaking her head, movements slight, saying _“no”_ as well as she could with her mouth gagged and her hands behind her back, but everyone’s attention was on the slow movement of Tamara’s hand, glinting black.

“So were we,” Tamara said. “Besides, aren’t you interested to see if that machine of yours works on more than just your ghost?”

  


“Kill them.”

She did.

  


“Kill her.”

Natalia’s hands shook so bad the shot almost went wide.

  


“Why did you tell them to do that? Why would you even suggest it?”

“I saved her, didn’t I?” Tamara was unfazed, despite Natalia’s careful work to ensure that she couldn’t be heard as she approached. Even in this pitch-dark tunnel, Natalia wasn’t expecting surprise. Tamara never looked scared; Natalia’s earliest memories of her involved several painful repetitions of slamming each other into the mats, vicious smiles as they went for each other’s throats.

“You’ve seen the Asset. You know that there are things worse than death.”

Tamara scoffed. “Don’t be dramatic, cестра.”

“We should have let her die.”

“ _No,_ ” Tamara snarled. The shift in emotion would have been startling if Natalia didn’t also know how to build a facade from cement and lipstick. “There are only three of us. We have to watch out for each other.”

Natalia started shaking her head, but Tamara reached out and grabbed Natalia’s chin tight between her fingers. “No, Natalia, cестра, no. We cannot let anyone divide us, okay?”

“I didn’t know you cared so much.”

“Of course I _care._ ” Tamara licked her lips, withdrew her hand. Natalia’s skin ached where the pressure left it. “I care more than you ever have, okay? I at least remember their _names._ ”

The dig was meant to hurt Natalia, but she was long past anger at herself for that particular decision.

“If it’s ever me,” Natalia said, shoving off the wall, the darkness of the narrow hallway folding around her, “you better let me die.”

“You know I won’t,” Tamara said, and that statement clung to Natalia even as she stepped into the sun.

  


“Kill him.”

The archer was so mundane, Natalia had begun to believe they had sent her on a bunk mission.

It was enough to offend her. She hadn’t needed simple missions since she was fifteen, what did they think they were doing? Just because she’d faltered when they asked her to kill one of the two people she’d ever given a single fuck about didn’t mean she couldn’t do her job.

His days were easy, slow. He got up at one in the afternoon and finished a pot of coffee before he left the kitchen. He polished and mended his arrows. He ate leftovers from takeout the night before for lunch. He walked his dog. He spoke to his neighbors, and wove between traffic as if he were more than human. He pissed off mobsters and helped children find their parents in grocery stores. He ordered takeout that was destined for lunch the next day. He sighed every time his phone lit up, the bugs she’d littered his apartment with telling her exactly who was on the other end.

It was only because she’d let him live long enough to see the consequences of his smart mouth and bad decisions that she’d watched him, from her vantage point two buildings over, fight four mobsters (two ex-military, each carrying a nine millimeter, each with one or more knives on his person) with nothing but his dog and the leash.

It had almost been enough to put the fear of a god in her. Almost. If she hadn’t given up in a higher power long ago, and if she wasn’t personally intimate with the lengths a person could go when the alternative was a bullet in the brain.

It did make her understand why he was a target, though. At least why he was a threat.

She took the opportunity to learn more about the organization he worked for. They’d been around since World War II, it seemed, and were headed by an aging Peggy Carter. She was soon to be replaced by her protégé, the one that Natalia knew as Inessa’s next target, as soon as she finished with her current job.

They’re unseating an empire, it seemed. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  


“Oh, so sorry, sir,” she said, her Russian accent leaking around the edge of her words.

“Don’t worry about it,” he responded, helping her up. The narrow aisles of the corner grocery store made for an awkward tumble and an even more uncomfortable ascent, but up close and personal is where Natalia preferred to work.

A small bag of apples lied on the ground among the tumbled boxes of mac and cheese, and he bent over quickly to grab them and hand them to her. Her cheeks flushed red, a color she knew complimented her lipstick nicely.

“Thank you,” she said, demure, polite.

“Are you, uh—” he said, eyes looking everywhere but the low cut of her top, “new in town?”

“Oh,” she said, brushing against his arm, not stepping away from him even though in the narrow aisle of this store, it was a tight fit. “Is it that obvious? I don’t have anyone to show me around, yet.”

“Clint,” he blurted, then blushed. “That’s, uh—my name. So. There. Now you’ve got someone.”

She laughed, a quiet thing under the top 40 trickling through the convenience store speakers. “Clint. Good name. Very American.” She reached her hand out to shake, saying, “I am Irina.”

“Good name, very—” he said, then cut himself off. “Where are you from? I’m not going to pretend to guess. I’ll just make a fool of myself.”

“I like men who stop before making themselves fools,” she said, watching the blush climb up his cheeks, the smile on his lips.

She isn’t sure what she came here to do. Recon was good, was smart, but it’d be delusional to say that he wouldn’t be dead already if it weren’t for some misguided hesitation on her part. There was something about him, or about SHIELD, that told her to _wait, look closer._

He finally moved, letting her trail behind him as he picked absentmindedly across the shelves, eyes flicking towards her when he thought she wasn’t looking. “So, are you, uh—in town for long?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, honestly. “I’m here for work.”

“What do you do?”

She smiled at him, eyes glittering. “I’m a spy for the Russian government, of course.”

He laughed. “Well,” he said, “I’m a spy for the American one.”

They were both fans of occasional honesty, it seemed. “A tale of star-crossed lovers, hmm?”

“It would be an interesting one, if I believed in destiny.”

“Do you not?” she asked.

“Not really,” he said. “I guess I just like to believe that we have some choice. I don’t really like the idea that everything we do is decided for us before we’re ever born.”

“You do not find comfort in thinking that everything happens for a reason?”

“Do you?”

“Maybe,” she said. “We live with the hands we are dealt when we are born. It makes sense that there would be a set number of cards that we end with.”

“I’m not entirely sure where your metaphor went there,” he said.

“I am not either,” she said, just to see him laugh, and he did. She let him lead her around the crammed grocer’s market, picking up things she thought kept up her appearance even though she knew she wouldn’t be around long enough to need them.

It wasn’t until they’re in line behind the register that he spoke up again.

“I think that believing everything happens for a reason is a good way to become submissive.”

She hadn’t forgotten about their earlier conversation, but she certainly didn’t expect it to pick back up. “Is it?”

“I guess. It removes agency from us.” He shrugged. “We can’t always just say ‘that’s the way it is’ and move on. Sometimes we have to stay and change it.”

“What if that isn’t in our cards?”

He shrugged again, and moved to check out, quiet while they both paid for their groceries. He stepped out onto the street, her only a half step behind him, and she didn’t realize she’d been waiting for his answer until he looked her in the eye and said—

“Irina—” He stopped, and sighed. “Sometimes, you just stop playing the game.”

  


In retrospect, she thinks it was the phone call that pushed her over the edge.

“They want to know what’s taking you so long,” Inessa said.

Natalia wanted to bristle at the coldness in her voice; she wanted to laugh with Inessa over meals and know that at the end of this, she could find solace in the fact that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t believe in the Red Room anymore.

“I want to make sure it’s clean,” she said.

The only reason Inessa didn’t smell the lie on her was because Natalia herself wasn’t sure it was one. She didn’t know what had stilled her finger so long on the trigger of her gun, but she wasn’t naive enough to tell herself that it was some misplaced hesitation, some hope of a savior.

A light hum came over the line, a sound Inessa never made before they scrambled her brains. Natalia was endlessly caught off guard by the small things that were different; Inessa texting ‘on the way’ instead of ‘omw’, songs Natalia didn’t recognize humming through her throat, the way she always calls Natalia _Natalia_ and never _Nat._

“Okay,” she said, finally. “They want you out of there before Tamara’s done. I’m about to meet you for mine.” Inessa paused, then added: “I just finished my last job. It was a lot of fun.”

Natalia had read Inessa’s case file, could picture clearly in her mind the face of the family of four she’d been sent after. Natalia wanted to hear the lie in Inessa’s voice, wanted to delude herself into thinking those children’s deaths were quick and painless, but she’d never had the luxury of small mercies.

“Tamara is taking longer than I am.”

“She also has an entire network to take down, cестра.” Something clicked open on the other end, and Natalia could translate the sound to an image of Inessa popping open her pretty belt of knives, rows and rows of glittering blades.

 _You used to favor guns,_ Natalia thought, but she didn’t say. _You didn’t like to feel the blood on your hands._

“Tell them I’ll be done by tomorrow.”

“You can tell them yourself, Natalia,” Inessa said. “I’ve got a plane to catch. Hey, we should meet up while I’m in D.C. Have you found any good cafes yet?”

“I’ll let you know,” Natalia said.

“See you later.” Inessa was the one that hung up first, and Natalia let herself feel the pleasure of watching her phone shatter from four stories up.

  


His string was taut, the arrow pointed directly at her throat.

“Don’t move or I’ll shoot,” he said, his eyes narrow.

“Don’t shoot or I’ll kill you,” she responded, tapping the knife in her hand softly against his jugular.

And of all the things, he laughed.

“What are you doing in my apartment?”

“I’m here to kill you,” she said.

“I don’t think that’s true,” he said, and Natalia felt the urge to growl.

“I think,” he continued, drawling in that way of his, the way that made her trust him, “that if you were here to kill me, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Well,” she said, smiling at him, knowing he could see the way her lips quirked in the light falling through the open bathroom door, “you are very good at your job.”

He hummed. “Not as good as you.”

“No,” she said. “Not as good as me.”

  


He gave her the pick of the bedroom or the couch, and she picked the couch with only a moment’s hesitation. He dumped a few blankets on her before wandering back into his own room, muttering something about how she better not drink all of his coffee, as if she shared his caffeine dependency.

It took half the night for her to convince herself he wasn’t going to kill her the moment her eyes closed, several hours of listening to his even breathing to convince her that he had really managed to fall asleep in the presence of an assassin.

She’s up the next morning before him, propped carefully on the countertop, legs crossed at the ankle beneath her. She held a fresh cup of coffee just to have something to do with her hands.

He broke routine, awake before ten, eyes wary but movements loose as he poured his own mug.

“So,” he said.

“So,” she echoed.

“To what do I owe the honor? I assume you didn’t come here just for the couch and the free coffee.”

“I’m not sure you can afford to give me coffee for free,” she said, and he laughed.

“Government pay. What can you say.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said.

“I guess not.”

“Though, if you are going to drink so much of it, you could splurge for something that tastes decent.”

He grimaced. “It’s American. It only gets so good.”

She hummed, and they stayed like that for a while; her, legs crossed on his counter, him, leaning against his cabinets and draining cup after cup.

“Where is your dog?”

It took him a second to answer, because he choked on the sip he was drinking. “What dog?”

“The chocolate lab.”

“Oh.” He coughed a few more times. “Not mine. She belonged to a friend, had me watching her for a few days. I don’t know if I have the time to take care of a dog.”

“You were good with her,” Natalia said.

“Thanks,” he responded, and she thought this conversation might have put him more on edge than her showing up in the middle of the night with a knife to his neck had.

“So,” he said after a moment. “The accent was faked.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, surprised despite herself. Then again, when wasn’t she, with him? He was cleverly unassuming.

She’d dressed very carefully for their conversation in the grocery store; contouring her makeup, a different color and style of hair, clothes that disguised and distracted from the muscle packed onto her frame. In theory, he shouldn’t have even remembered her; in practice, he at least shouldn’t have drawn the line between Irina and Natalia.

“It might have been a little much, it seems.”

“I’m good with faces.”

“So am I.”

“Good with conversation too, it seems,” he said, “considering the circles you’ve been talking around why you’re actually here.”

What little she had left of her coffee had long gone cold by then, but she found it within herself to knock the dregs back like a shot, pretending it could steel her nerves.

“Do you know who I am?”

He eyed her slowly. “I can take a guess.”

“Do you know who I work for?”

“Do you know who _I_ work for?”

“Yes,” she said. “And your boss has less than two days before he’s assassinated.”

It really was gratifying to watch Barton choke on his coffee.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “What?”

“Colonel Nicholas Joseph Fury,” she said. “Hero of the Bogota hostage. He’s to replace your Margaret Carter soon.”

“Following you so far.”

“One of my sisters is currently assigned to kill him. She will make her move between Friday and Sunday, because your troops will be scattered on missions and Carter will be radio silent, in no place to help the mess your organization will become.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “Let’s break this down. First—your sister?”

“Inessa Alianovna Petrov. We went through Black Widow training together.”

“There is more than one Black Widow?”

“There are three of us.”

“Well, that blows,” he said. “I don’t think we knew that. What’s the third one up to?”

“Tamara was sent after a whole other network in your organization. This was to be a coordinated op.”

“Wait. Are you telling me that you were sent to assassinate me because I’m important?” he asked.

“I didn’t say that.”

“I assumed it was because of that time I killed a bunch of Russian mafia guys. Are you saying it’s because my death would help cause the end of SHIELD? Am I really as important as Nick Fury?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she said.

“I should put that on my resume.”

“This is serious,” she said. “I’m trying to help you.”

“I know,” he said. “I called Fury the moment you entered my house.”

  


She wasn’t sure what she expected from Nicholas Fury, but the man sure kept to a predictable aesthetic.

She expected the jacket, the five different weapons shoved in various sheathes around his body. She even expected the deferential way that Barton treated him, keeping his head bent and letting him have the room. Perhaps the only thing that might have surprised her was seeing him in front of her with breath still in his lungs.

“Natalia Alianovna Romanova,” he said, watching where she sat perched on the counter, another cup of coffee in her hands. “I have to say, I didn’t expect to see you on friendly terms.”

She took a sip of her coffee. It was a bit better on a second brew.

“Barton here says you’re pretty good,” he continued, apparently unaffected by her lack of encouraging response. “We knew that. He also says you aren’t here to kill him, but that’s assuming I trust his judgement. Seeing as he didn’t see fit to tell us that one of the world’s best assassins was tailing him until she broke into his apartment in the middle of the night. Because apparently, he had the misguided notion that _maybe_ he could convince you to join our side.”

It seemed pretty obvious to her that he was speaking more to Barton, who was holding up the doorway to the kitchen, sacks of muscle standing just beyond, so she continued watching Fury instead of responding.

“So,” Fury said. “Did he?”

“I didn’t lie to him,” she said. “But I think that ‘joining your side’ might be a little much.”

“Maybe.” His eyes were steady, heavy weights that might have been unsettling if Natalia could feel unsettled. She was drowning, but in the grave she’d dug for herself. “But that doesn’t explain why you made your introduction by exposing your entire organization.”

She shrugged. “Have you considered that maybe people change, Colonel?”

“I’ll consider it the day I see it happen,” he said.

“Have you considered that maybe people realize what they’d been taught is wrong, and that they’re trying to be better?”

“There’s only so much brainwashing a person can recover from. Honestly, I should arrest you, and then bury you until you’ve paid for your crimes.”

Natalia didn’t know what he wanted from her. She’d been taught to beg, but only with a knife in her hand. She didn’t know the meaning of mercy.

“Try,” she said, “and I’ll never be able to get the blood clean from my hands.”

She enjoyed watching his hired muscle twitch from beyond the doorframe. Barton, similarly tuned to their movement, stretched even farther across the doorframe, creating a distinct barrier to the kitchen. She was struck, suddenly, with the thought that maybe Barton’s presence at the door wasn’t for Fury’s benefit, but for hers.

“I’m not sure if that’s a threat,” he said.

“To be fair,” she said, “I’m not either.”

He nodded and stood, both eyes wary on her careless perch. Barton shifted the same moment he did, and it was now clear just how his lazy posture a thin veil for the tension underneath.

“What can you tell us about your ‘sisters’?” Fury said, the air quotes clear in his words.

“Inessa is the one you need to worry about,” she said.

“She the one they’ve sent after me?”

Natalia nodded. “She is good.”

“That isn’t helpful.”

“She is very good.”

“If you called me all the way out here, you could at least give me something useful.”

“She isn’t going to make an obvious move towards you, not until it’s too late. She likes to wait in your home, hidden until you relax enough that she can get behind you with a gun to your spine.” She waited, just long enough to be sure her words registered. “And be careful. She likes to go for the eyes.”

Fury’s gaze flicked to her, and then to Barton. “She’s yours to keep track of. God willing, she won’t murder you in your sleep.”

Barton nodded, moving aside so he could get through the door. “Be careful, sir.”

“Take care of yourself before you worry about me.”

They both watched as he left the apartment, door slamming heavy behind him and his crew.

“For the record,” she said, “I promise not to kill you.”

“Considering that would be really bad for me,” he responded, “I hope you’re telling the truth.”

  


She saw Fury a few weeks later, same heavy gaze not dampened by the eyepatch covering his left eye. Three long scratches peeked out of the edge of his bandage.

“I told you,” she said.

“So you did,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want a job?”

  


It was years before Natasha saw the Asset again, and she almost didn’t believe her eyes. Part of her had convinced herself that he was a figment, another construction of her childhood; there were other things, enough pieces of her memory that had been fabricated by someone else, that it didn’t seem like such a stretch that the ghost of Hydra would be one as well. Besides, it had been a really long day, and she had just sustained a considerable head injury.

The part of her brain that never recovered from the competition of the Red Room found itself distantly impressed; it took a lot to shoot out three tires on a car moving seventy miles an hour.

She used herself as a shield between her and the scientist. SHIELD, do you get it? A year into her official employment under Nick Fury, and this was one of her first solo ops, given to her only because they were so low on manpower.

She was woozy from dehydration and what was likely a moderate concussion. The car was flipped on its side, and it was taking all of her willpower to drag herself out the side of the cab, and then to reach over and pull the scientist out after her.

For the first second she spotted him, she thought he was a mirage. He’s a ghost, as much physically as from her past. Now, standing under the already wavering sun, looking the exact same as the day she met him, he seemed damn near impossible.

She thought she might understand him, now, after Inessa; there was a reason he couldn’t be impressed.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said, but his eyes didn’t even flick towards her as he loaded his gun. She lunged forward, shoving the doctor behind her as she nestled them against the armored inside of what was left of the car.

“You don’t have to do this!” she tried again as her fingers scrambled for the gun she kept in her boot, only to be met with silence. A silence so heavy, she felt, that she could almost convince herself that she and the scientist were alone in this desert.

Then his gun fired and the roaring in her ears did nothing to drown out the sound of the scientist choking on his own blood, of the bullet that made it into his heart after first going through her stomach.

She gave up on trying to find her gun because the Asset was gone and the scientist was dead, and she had bigger things to do, like decide if she was going to die here with him.

  


When she woke up in the hospital two days later, among the flowers on her bedside table, there was a small stuffed spider.

She figured it was probably from Clint, sent over after he heard the news. The tag attached to one of its legs identified it as a Beanie baby.

She fiddled with it for a moment, debating what to do—she’d never had a stuffed animal before. Finally, she flips the tag open— “Hairy” was his name, apparently, and he came with a cute little poem—

_Hairy the spider hangs from a thread_

_Looking at you from overhead_

_Hanging around is his favorite way_

_Of spending each and every day!_

He also came with a note, in handwriting Natasha didn’t recognize. The red pen stood out against the black text, written right over the barcode, but the drugs in her system made reading anything difficult. It took far too long for her to read.

“It’s been a while, cестра. Get well soon -T”

  


One year later and she opened the door to her unlocked apartment.

She knew immediately that something was wrong, and was surprised by the dryness in her mouth. She’d known this was coming, of course, but now that she was staring the moment in the face, she surprised herself with how much she didn’t want to die.

She pressed the button on her phone that let both Clint and Fury know she needed backup, even though she knew there was no way they’d reach her in time. She pulled her gun out of its holster on her hip and squared her shoulders, because her borrowed time may have run out, but there was no way she was going down without a fight.

Tamara sat at the bar in her kitchen, mug between her hands, gun on the counter. “I made one for you,” she said, pointing to the chipped bit of ceramic next to the sink. “I’m not sure how you drink this shit,” she said, even as she took a sip.

Natasha walked over, picked the other mug up off the counter, and let the taste of bitter American coffee wash some of the tightness out of her throat. She knew that this was probably foolish, but she didn’t think Tamara would poison her. Tamara knew she deserved something better than such an impersonal death.

“You get used to it,” she responded, and Tamara hummed.

After a moment, Natasha said, “I got the spider you left me.”

“Ah, yes. Cute, wasn’t he?”

Natasha took another sip of her coffee. “If you could get past his name being ‘Hairy’.”

Tamara shrugged. “We can’t all choose our names.”

“Right. Tell me, did they put ‘Natasha’ or ‘Natalia’ on my target file?” Natasha asked.

Tamara grinned, all teeth. “You’re smarter than you look.”

“I never have been dull,” she responded. “Though, I will say I’m surprised they didn’t send the Asset,” she said.

“Oh, they know you’re looking for him,” Tamara answered, stirring the spoon around and around in her mug. “Besides, what better way to kill a spider than the one that beat her at sparring?”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “I think your memory’s a little flawed, there.”

Tamara shrugged. “Not like you can prove it either way.”

“I think I’m going to kill Inessa,” Natasha said, and Tamara let her head fall back.

She wasn’t sure why she said it. Maybe the thought had just been burning in her chest too long, and she had to say it aloud to someone, get their opinion. And there was only one other person on earth who could really understand, who had known both versions of her sister, seen what they had done to her—

Well, maybe two. But only one that was sitting in her apartment kitchen, drinking her coffee.

“You shouldn’t—”

“You can’t save her,” Natasha said.

“I _can—”_ Tamara was hissing, but Natasha talked over her.

“That thing, walking around in her skin—you know that isn’t our cестра anymore.”

“Of course you could just give up on her like that,” Tamara said.

“I gave up on her when I let them _ruin her._ She was trying to tell us no, do you remember that?”

“So what, you think she’d be better off dead?”

“I know that I would prefer it,” Natasha said. “I think it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever done, letting her live.”

One of Tamara’s knives landed heavy in her countertop, the _thud_ reverberating through her small apartment. “You sure have a skewed idea of _worst.”_

It’s the first time Natasha’s ever heard Tamara say anything bad about the Red Room, about what they were made to be, but maybe, she thought, they were all too old for brainwashing.

“And you seem to have forgotten that there are some things worse than death.”

“And here I thought those heroes had turned you soft,” Tamara said, standing. She brushed past Natasha on her way to the sink, where she dumped out the rest of her cup, rinsed it once before leaving it in the basin. “Well, if that’s all, I’ll be on my way.”

Natasha peered into her own mug. “And here I thought you were too good to poison me.”

“I’ve always thought it strange they taught us to prefer knives and guns over poisons. What do they think spiders are?” Tamara said. “But no. Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you.”

“You aren’t?” Natasha kept her voice dry, but disbelief almost sent her hands shaking.

“No,” she said, checking the bullets in her gun. “If they want you dead, they’re going to have to do it themselves. Black Widows kill their husbands, not their sisters.”

“And you thought I’d gone soft.”

“Unfortunately, we both have,” Tamara said. “But they shouldn’t have asked me. They should have known that there was at least one thing I wouldn’t do.”

The blow didn’t land, but Tamara didn’t wait. “Hope you never see me again,” she said, voice breezy as she let herself out.

“You should hope the same,” Natasha called, but her sister was already gone.

  


Natasha met a girl outside a bar. Her smile was bright but her eyes were vacant, and she looked down at the blood on her palms with a distant kind of delight. Her hair swung around her shoulders, cut in a pretty little bob, same as it had been for the past five years. Natasha watched as she brushed the blood from her chin with the pad of her thumb, only standing to smear it further.

“I see you.” Her voice was light, almost laughing. Her gaze roamed loosely over the landscape, flicking to Natasha’s hiding spot and away. “Come out to play, little spider.”

Natasha looked Inessa in the eye when she put a bullet through her brain, because she has begun to learn the meaning of mercy.

  


She didn’t know how she got swept up in Steve’s great quest for his best friend, amongst everything else she was doing, except for the fact that she has knew that she was the only person with a shot at finding him. Brainwashed ghosts, the both of them, running from pasts they weren’t sure how to take responsibility for.

“I knew him. Before Odessa,” she said, and Steve picked up faster than she expected him to; he was smarter than they gave him credit for.

“In the Red Room?” At her nod, he continued, “I’ve told you about Bucky. Why didn’t you tell me before—” _before he blew up a bridge in the middle of rush hour. Before I had to look him in the eyes as he took aim at my head. Before I had to lose him again._

“Because I didn’t think there was any Bucky left in him,” she responded, and watched as Steve crumpled into himself.

  


She tried not to kill them all, she really did, because she was a hero now, and heroes took prisoners where they could and lives only when they couldn’t, but after all these years she couldn’t deny herself the simple pleasure of watching the life fade from the Red Room herself.

Because these were the people who stole her life from here. Who were still stealing from her, their faces flashing behind her eyelids every time she tried to rest.

(She wouldn’t trade her current life for the world. Now she knew how to build a family from the rubble, had people around her who were built from brick and mortar. She couldn’t imagine what a “normal” life would have been like, couldn’t imagine she would have been happy. But she deserved once in her life, at least, a good night’s sleep.)

As she pulled the Red Room apart with her nails, she didn’t once run into Tamara. Some part of her worried, but another allowed herself to believe that Tamara also got free, is living her life happy.

  


“I forgive you,” she said to him, and he nearly dropped his mug.

“For what?” Barnes asked, his voice too casual for the width of his eyes.

“For shooting me through the gut,” she said.

He eyed her over. “You must have been very good, since it wasn’t your heart.”

“You weren’t aiming for me.”

Barnes nodded as if that explained it. “For the record, I forgive you for breaking my arm.”

So he did remember. She’s glad she was able to get half the purpose of this conversation out of the way so early. “Did you get in trouble for it?”

“I’m not sure. I think they wiped me right after.”

She hummed. “What was it like? Being wiped?”

“What was it like? Having sisters?”

She deserved that, she really did.

“I killed one of them.”

“I killed another, I think,” he said, turning back to fiddle with the sink.

“You did. In one of our last trainings.”

“What was her name?”

Natasha paused. The hesitation in and of itself is enough to make Barnes look at her. “I don’t know.”

“They didn’t tell you?”

“I didn’t bother knowing.”

She—she didn’t know what she expected, exactly, but it definitely wasn’t Barnes nodding his head and saying, “Yeah, I get it.”

She didn’t need his understanding, but she wasn’t expecting it, either. She imagined the slight frown the sentence might have put on Clint’s face, or the flinch it might have sent through Steve—though, she guessed, she might have been underestimating them, the same as everyone else.

“Sometimes, on the war front—” he paused, and she knew he was thinking about the snatches of memory he had floating around his mind, knew he was taking a second not out of hesitation but in order to control the confused mess of his thoughts, “—sometimes, it was better not to know than to have to remember.”

She was never surprised at how alike the two of them were, cut from the same cloth. It was sometimes unnerving, though, to have someone who _got_ her so much.

“My sister—the one I killed,” she said. “I knew her name. Инесса.”

Barnes nodded and leaned against the counter, understanding that these were words she needed to say, not something she needed him to hear.

“She was smaller than me. Kinder, I think. She made friends with the rest of the girls. I’m not sure how she survived to be one of the last of us.”

“Steve,” he said, and they smiled at each other, sharing the joke.

“We both know he got this far on luck and stubbornness. Inessa, though—she liked guns, and she liked us, but she didn’t believe in the Red Room. Not in the way Тамара did.”

“Tamara?”

“There were three of us, who lived. We were the Black Widows. She was the third.”

She didn’t have to say that the fact that they were also Black Widows was the only reason she knew their  names. She didn’t have to tell him that she grew attached the moment she thought it was safe to. Barnes knew, and it was the only kindness she could ask.

“I killed Inessa because Tamara told them to wipe her, and they did.”

“Wipe?” he said, and she nodded. “Like they used to do to me?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not sorry.” A sentence, not a question.

“I’ll ask forgiveness from her if I see her again,” she said. “But I don’t think I’ll need to.”

“No,” he said. “You won’t.”

  


If you’d asked the Natalia perched across the alley from Clint Barton’s apartment, watching him through the scope on her rifle, what she’d be doing in a decade, she probably would have said she’d be dead. If not, then that she’d be working still, moving from one victim to the next.

If you’d told her the truth—that she’d have dinner every Sunday with two super soldiers that were more myth than reality, except for when they were serving her spaghetti, or that she’d get her nails painted twice a month with the CEO of Stark Industries (even though she always picked off the paint within a day or two), or that she’d have regular pool matches with gods or people around her that she could consider family—she probably would have laughed before cutting out your tongue for spreading lies she couldn’t let herself believe. But that’s the difference between Natasha and Natalia, she supposed.

Natasha could let herself believe in hope.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you liked it!!! please leave a comment, they make my day
> 
> also i wrote that bit about fury's eye BEFORE captain marvel so don't @ me
> 
> (i bet none of you can guess what the first scene i wrote of this was. go ahead. try)
> 
> good luck everyone (like me) who is working on their finals this week!! you'll do great i believe in you!!


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